


fissures dans le froid de ton âme

by amako



Series: ShikaSakuWeek Hanami 2020 [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Adoptive Parent Nara Shikaku, Adoptive Parent Nara Yoshino, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood and Injury, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Children, Children in love, Curses, Cute Kids, Deaf Character, Dubious Consent, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Fae Curses, Harm to Children, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, POV Child, Pre-Canon, Pre-Naruto Canon Era, Pre-Relationship, Rape/Non-con Elements, Slow Burn, Suicide Attempt, Underage Rape/Non-con, and nothing is described at all, both shikamaru and sakura are children, but it does get better, but it's still in the canon world and following canon events, but it's the cute stuff children do you know, child suicide attempt, help people blacklist this shit, i'm writing it but no one should have to fucking read it, lack of agency, more or less of course, mute character, nose kisses and stuff, so it's up to you my dudes, so of course they're not dating, this is nasty but it lasts literaly less than one sentence, this should be a canon tag omfg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:54:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23401816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amako/pseuds/amako
Summary: The working theory is that her parents must have pissed off the Fées. Not that there's any proof, because her parents are dead (although that, in itself, might be proof that they pissed off the Fées).orSakura is cursed with obedience.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Nara Shikaku, Haruno Sakura & Nara Shikamaru, Haruno Sakura & Nara Yoshino, Haruno Sakura/Nara Shikamaru, Nara Shikaku/Nara Yoshino
Series: ShikaSakuWeek Hanami 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1679485
Comments: 15
Kudos: 142
Collections: ShikaSaku Hanami 2020, mako's favourites





	fissures dans le froid de ton âme

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ShikaSaku Week Hanami Day 3  
> Prompt 2: fissures dans le froid de ton âme / cracks in the coldness of your soul
> 
> This is a dark story, that puts children in harm's way. I've done my best to tag, but I do like some suspense so I sure hope you've read the tags AND warnings. Choose not is NOT the same as No warning applies. I don't want to hear that you blame me for your experience, this is literally what "Choose not" is here for. However if you think I missed a tag, you can let me know in a comment (be nice) and I'll tag it in the most appropriate way.
> 
> That being said, I think this is my favourite story so far. Just like Day 2's story, this WILL have a part 2.
> 
> I've been thinking real hard in my small angsty brain, so the plan is that Day 4 will be original content I've already written ; Day 5 will be a a double post cause I like both prompts too much to choose, so for prompt 1 you'll get the continuation of THIS fic, and for prompt 2 you'll get the continuation of DAY 2's fic ; Day 6 will be original content ; Day 7 will be either the follow-up of Day 4 if I'm not done writing the behemoth that it's currently turning into, or original content if I post Day 4 completed ; Day 8 I'll do a remix challenge but I'm not sure for which story, and I might very well write two remixes if I'm feeling up to it. YOU EXCITED YET? CAUSE I SURE FUCKING AM!!! 
> 
> Man i'm so pumped for this hanami week! I mean isn't it the dream when you're modding a week for your otp and other people are participating and you get like, ten times the amount of fics in one week for your otp as you get in the seven months leading to the next shikasaku week?
> 
> If you read all the tags but you're scared of being upset by anything in this fic, you can spoil yourself in the end notes.
> 
> Please tell me what you think! Yesterday's story didn't get any comments and I'll be honest with you, given the number of kuddos it already has, it baffles me that no one wanted to say anything. Like, man, how am i supposed to keep writing if there's no one on the other side? that actually hurts. so yeah, maybe let me know if you like what i write? and then people are surprised that content creators keep disappearing and leaving fandoms to die... maybe they wouldn't if the people complaining actually interacted with the work being put out? hum?
> 
> ok i'm done bitching, sorry. enjoy the story!

The working theory is that her parents must have pissed off the Fées.

Not that there's any proof, because her parents are dead (although that, in itself, might be proof that they pissed off the Fées). If the working theory is right, there isn't much to be done to appease them. They won't be satisfied until her parents have been thoroughly punished, even if they're already dead and she's the only thing left of them for the Fées to make suffer.

So far, they're doing a pretty good job.

She was put in the orphanage, then placed in a foster home soon enough. Then her foster family noticed the curse.

It's something easy enough, at first, a throwaway comment that Sakura can't even remember, all these years later, when there have been a thousand others laid on top. But the woman of the house tells her something, and Sakura obeys instantly.

In the days that follow, the couple experiment with their wording, slowly growing more vicious, more amused by her inability to refuse anything. One night, the woman comes into Sakura's room. She orders her to keep quiet, she orders her to stay there and take it. Sakura keeps quiet, stays here and takes it.

After the first week in her new family, Sakura waits until the couple look away for just a second and she walks up to the window of the third floor and jumps.

They notice almost immediately, because a man passing by witnesses the whole thing and the bloodcurdling scream he lets out would be enough to rouse the Shodaime from his grave. His shunshin is just a second too late, and she crashes right at his feet.

Everything hurts so much that it almost doesn't hurt anymore. As her life bleeds out from the thousand wounds on her small body, she watches the clouds pass over her head, a caravan of soft, beautiful cotton balls. She smiles, bloody and broken, a red foam slowly pooling at the corner of her mouth, and she wonders if the shinigami will take her to the clouds, so she can dance with them, climb on their caravan and travel into her next life with them.

The man is kneeling next to her, frantic and almost half-sobbing with hysteria, trying to stop the bleeding happening in twenty places at one. Sakura looks at him with gentle eyes, until he notices her looking. His voice takes on a desperate tone and he cries out for her to "Stay alive! Don't die, oh _kami_ , please don't let her die."

When she begins to sob as well, he thinks it's the shock kicking in. He doesn't understand that in that moment, he just saved her life.

* * *

By some miracle, she's taken to the hospital right in time and they manage to stabilize her. In the back room, the nurses who assisted in the surgery are quiet. It's always hard, working on children. Especially children who apparently tried to take their own life. But that would just make them down a shot of something to keep going, not cause them to go quiet like that. They won't talk about it, but the two women and one man all noticed how the capillaries, then the arteries, had begun stitching themselves back together right there on the operation table, always inside a wound the surgeon wasn't currently treating.

They've worked on shinobi enough, they've all been sworn to secrecy. The girl doesn't have a clan or family anymore, but that doesn't exempt them from their oath. When you work in a ninja hospital, you shut your mouth and you take this kind of weird shit to the grave. You never know when it's a secret kekkei-genkai or a jutsu, something you have no right to know, let alone talk about.

The girl eventually wakes up and that's one good news in the see of death they see every day. The nurses keep quiet and they move on.

* * *

Sakura opens her eyes.

That, in itself, is a tragedy.

She's already sobbing by the time the door to her room opens and a man walks in. Through her tears, his face is blurry, and she doesn't know if he's her foster father. But she's not taking any chances. She bunches up her little fists and presses them against her ears, as hard as she can. She doesn't care that there's snot dripping on her lips, she doesn't care that she's hurting herself with how hard she's trying to keep any sound out.

Sakura wishes no one had seen her fall. She wishes-

“Hello, Sakura.”

The sound slips through her fists, muffled, but this isn't her foster father's voice. "Shut up!" She screams, throat raw, her whole body aching from the breaks still healing and the wounds already patched up. "Don't _talk_!"

She's never going to escape this. She's hyperventilating, her fists apparently useless to protect her. A dreadful terror spreads like a disease through her, bringing her on the verge of a panic attack she's too young to know how to deal with. Shaking from head to toe, she rips the IV from her hand, falling from the bed in her haste. She doesn't stop for the cast around her ankle or the stitches ripping apart or the pain radiating through her whole body. If there's even a sliver of a chance that this might work...

Strong arms wrap around her small chest before she can climb onto the windowsill. Sakura tries to fight him off, but she's weak and hurt and bleeding again. And above all, she's terrified of what he wants to say, of what he's going to order her to do, to accept, to _keep quiet and take it, girl._

She's crying hysterically, cold with horror and too weak to keep lashing out. The man is hushing her, carrying her back to the bed where he sits, back against the wall so he can keep his arms around her. He's rocking her gently, humming a song without lyrics, no words coming out of his mouth.

It takes a while for her to notice, but eventually it registers. He smells like the man who ordered her to live. She's too tired to even be angry. He's going to tell her to do things and she'll have to obey. She doesn't _want to_.

“Sakura?”

She sighs against his chest, a small, pathetic sound. Let him talk. She can't do anything to stop him anyway. He seems to accept that as answer enough.

“My name is Nara Shikaku. It's nice to meet you.”

Her face is hidden away against his neck and he's still rocking her gently. Sakura stays wary, but there is the smallest seed of hope being planted inside her heart.

“I'm sorry I wasn't able to catch you before. I tried really hard, I promise.”

“Shouldn't have tried,” she whispers, exhausted and in pain. The man, Nara-san, shudders against her.

“Why did you jump, Sakura?”

She tenses up immediately, but she doesn't feel the nausea, the pull that hooks behind her spine whenever someone gives her an order, the pull that forces her to obey. Little by little, she relaxes, hoping, _hoping._

“I want it to stop,” she murmurs.

“Stop? Weren't you happy with the Hyūga?”

She closes her eyes, burrowing into his embrace. He's warm, and he's calm, and he's not telling her to do anything. “They weren't nice.”

She can feel his jaw tightening where it's pressed against the crown of her head. “Did they hurt you?”

“They told me to do things I didn't want to do.”

“Sakura, can you look at me? You don't have to, if you don't want to.”

She bites her bottom lip, but nods slightly. Nara-san lifts her up gently, mindful of her casts and healing wounds, and sits her on his thighs, facing him.

Sakura notices that he has big scars on his face, that look really cool. He's probably a shinobi. Her foster family aren't shinobi, and she doesn't know about her parents. She wonders if her mom was kunoichi. Maybe she had cool scars too, or maybe her dad. She wishes she knew.

“Sweetheart, most children, when they're told something they don't want to do, don't jump out of windows.” Sakura squints a little, combing his words for an order that she doesn't find. “Explain to me why you're different.”

Sakura _keens_ , the pull on her spine at his order all the more painful because she was starting to hope that maybe, _maybe._

“When someone tells me to do something, I have to do it even if I don't want to.” The words are ripped away from her throat, leaving in a rush. “Hyūga-san told me to put my hand on the big wood stove and it hurt so much and I wanted to take it off but she told me I wasn't allowed to stop touching it until she said so. Then I don't remember what happened but I woke up and my hand was hurting so bad. Look, see?” She thrusts her hand in his face without wanting to, her body out of her control.

Nara-san looks suddenly green, and she wonders if she should be worried about him because she's never seen someone looking like this before. But she remembers he wasn't supposed to tell her what to do and he did anyway, so she doesn't want to worry about him anymore.

“ _Kami_ ,” he whispers, sounding really sad. “I'm so sorry, Sakura.”

“Will you let me jump from the window now? I don't want you to give me another order.”

“Great Deer, forgive me, sweetheart. I didn't know you had no choice. I promise you, I won't ever give you an order again.”

“I forgive you,” she says without controlling her words, the pull on her spine burning like a brand.

Nara-san slams a palm against his mouth, looking horrified. He's saying something that sounds a bit like a swear but she can't hear very well. Maybe people should all stay with their hand on their mouth so that she'll never have to hear an order ever again.

“Sakura, I'm going to stop talking so I don't make another mistake, ok? I'm bringing you home for now until we can decide what's going to happen to you. If you need anything or you want to talk to me, you can, but I won't answer unless you ask me too. It's going to be okay, love, I promise.”

He gathers her in his arms again, lifting her up. True to his word, he doesn't talk all the way down to the ground floor of the hospital, where he goes into a room. There, a nurse strips her of her hospital gown, redoing the stitches that popped and replacing the splinters she took off her fingers when she tried to cover her ears. The man say something to Nara-san about blood transfusion and painkillers but Sakura doesn't understand, only paying attention because she's afraid one of them is going to give her an order. But nothing comes and the nurse slips a loose yukata on her body, warming her up a bit. Nara-san picks her up again, shifting her until she's staying on his hip so he can grab something from a shelf. Then he sits her down on the desk and he puts something in her ears, and suddenly, she can't hear anything.

Sakura looks up with wide, hopeful eyes into his, but he only gives her a sad smile before picking her up again. She doesn't say anything, but at the orphanage they told her she was too old to be carried. She likes this, though, so she wraps her tiny arms around his chest, resting her cheek against his chest. With the thing he put in her ear, Sakura can't hear anything, but his heart is beating against her temple, and she can feel his chest rising against her cheek.

It's nice.

* * *

Sakura quickly finds out that she hates shunshins. Not that she knows the word for them, but they make her nauseous and it reminds her of when she's been told what to do. It only happens once before they're in front of the Nara Forest's entrance. She looks up from Nara-san's chest, eyes filled with wonder. She never came close, because she knows it's only allowed for the people of the clan and Sakura is an orphan.

She wonder if her clan had a forest, too. Or maybe a stream? The Haruno Waterfall, that'd be cool. They wander through the trees for a little bit, until Nara-san points to somewhere between the trunks and Sakura sees a deer!

Her excited squeal doesn't even scare it away, and she watches it avidly as they pass by, until the first house of the Nara Compound appears. Soon, he's setting her down on a bamboo elevated floor. He rings a bell next to the door, and it slides open not long after.

There's a tall woman with beautiful brown hair in a ponytail. Sakura looks at her in admiration, wondering if her mom was beautiful too. Maybe not, because her foster mother told Sakura she was an ugly little bitch. She's not sure what the last word means, but it didn't sound very nice at the time. But if Sakura is ugly, maybe her mother wasn't very beautiful either.

She watches the woman intensely anyway, almost immediately relaxed by her calming look, and the smile on her face as soon as she notices Sakura. Then she turns towards Nara-san and she's not smiling anymore. She doesn't hear what the woman says, which is a relief, but then Nara-san moves his hands and the woman moves them back. Sakura has never been to school, with everything that happened in her young life, but she's not stupid (she doesn't actually know just how incredibly smart she is, but there's never been anyone to tell her, now, was there?) and she understands quickly enough that they must be speaking a tongue of hands, which makes her giggle.

The woman looks down at her again, and now she has the same look on her face as Nara-san had in the hospital, this small, sad smile that she's quickly beginning to hate. Then Sakura remembers that Nara-san actually told her she could give him permission to speak, which she's still so awed by. She really hopes he's not going to become mean, or the lady.

“You can talk, Nara-san, if you want,” she says with a cautious tone, bracing herself.

He gives her a warm smile. “Thank you, Sakura-chan. Is it okay if I call you that?” She nods, the wording nice and neutral. “It's okay if you call me Shikaku, then. This is my wife, Nara Yoshino. She's very nice, but I told her about you so she won't talk if you don't want her to.”

“She can,” she whispers, but as soon as she's said it, she regrets her words, fear crawling back into her mind. She jumps into Shikaku's arms, hiding away in his neck. She pushes her fingers inside her ears, hoping that it'll be enough on top of the little balls that if the lady gives her an order, she won't hear it.

From above Shikaku's shoulder, she can see the lady looking at her, giving her smile and a wink, miming zipping her mouth shut. Sakura can't stop herself from giggling, muffling her snort of laughter in Shikaku's kimono. She peeks again, and this time she gives the lady a nod.

“Thank you for trusting me, little fawn. You can call me Yoshino. I'm really sorry for what happened to you. You have my word that no one will ever force you to do something, ever again.”

There is a shadow in the house, behind the woman. It's moving in a strange way. Seeing her look, Yoshino turns around and beckons someone Sakura can't see to come closer. Shikaku sits down on the raised floor with Sakura still in his arms, and she's stunned silent when she sees a little boy stumbled out of the house, his hands tucked in the pockets of his hakama. He's looking down at the floor, but Yoshino taps his chin gently and he looks up.

She begins to move her hands again in that silent language that fascinates Sakura more and more, and the boy even seems to understand it! Sakura wonders if maybe it's a special language of the Nara, like a secret ninja thing maybe. That'd be really cool. She's beginning to think that the Nara are the coolest people in the village, with their own forest, the deer, and now the hand language.

The boy nods, before turning to study Sakura's face, tilting his face slightly. He raises one hand and places it on his chest, before tapping two fingers of one hand onto the two fingers of his other hand. Then with one hand, he traces a line from his temple to above his ear and into the air above his head.

Sakura watches him intensely, understanding that he's saying something with his hand language. He must have gotten that she was paying attention, because he grins and repeats the gestures, one, then two times. Engrossed in what he's doing, Sakura releases her grip on Shikaku, eventually climbing off his lap to stand on the bamboo floor. Tongue almost out in concentration, she reproduces his gestures perfectly.

Eyes wide in surprise, he turns to look at the couple and begins gesturing rapidly, to Sakura's confusion. He looks absolutely thrilled though, so she can't help but giggle at his enthusiasm. Yoshino looks down at Sakura and smiles.

“This is our son, Nara Shikamaru. He was sick when he was a baby, and now he can't hear from his left ear, and only a little bit from his right. Because of that, he doesn't like to speak, so he uses sign language. It's what we do with our hands.”

Sakura's little heart fills with joy so much she's almost vibrating on her cast. She really hopes Shikamaru will like so he can be her best friend, because then he will never tell her what to do!

“The signs he showed you meant _My name is Shikamaru._ ” As she speaks, she does the signs again, so Sakura can follow. “The last one is a name sign, it's something we come up with for each person individually. I have one, and so does Shikaku, and maybe one day, you'll have one as well.”

Sakura gives her the widest grin, hoping really hard inside her head that they'll gift her one. She feels a tap on her shoulder, so she turns around to face Shikamaru, face suddenly serious because she wants to focus on what he wants to say. No matter that she doesn't understand a word of it, but that's not a concern for a seven-year-old. He signs something quick, and both his parents gasp, Shikaku even reaching for Sakura's head as if to cover her eyes, or maybe her ears.

Sakura stands there, puzzled, before her smart little mind catches up and she gives Shikamaru a wild look, before turning to Shikaku. In her hurry, her loose yukata catches onto one of her stitches and she cries out, legs giving out under her from the shock.

Shikamaru's arm reaches out, stabilizing her long enough for his father to gather her into his arms.

“I'm sorry Sakura, I shouldn't have let you stand this long. We Nara are healers, we'll take care of you.”

The family and Sakura walk into the house, Shikamaru sliding the door shut behind them. Sakura has tears of pain in her eyes, exhaustion finally catching up to her, but she still tugs on Shikaku's kimono collar until he bends his head a little to be closer. Quietly, she tells him: “I didn't have to do what Shikamaru told me, didn't I?”

Shikaku gives her a shaky smile. “He ordered you to blink three times, and you didn't obey.”

Sakura feels herself finally collapse on the inside, burrowing as close as she can into Shikaku's embrace. She's crying softly, silently, tears of exhaustion and relief that don't go away even as Yoshino takes care of her stitches and Shikaku makes her drink a herbal tea that smells really nice.

She stays there, lying on her new futon in Shikamaru's room, for the first time since leaving her empty house for the orphanage, feeling like maybe things are going to be alright. Shikamaru has decided he doesn't want to be alone for the first night in case she's afraid, Yoshino explains to her, asking if she minds. Sakura absolutely doesn't, so glad not to be alone in her comfy, clean futon.

They share the blanket, two little bodies touching from him to toes, legs intertwined as much as Sakura's cast allows them. Their heads are on the same, gigantic pillow, pink and brown hair mixing like paint on the pillowcase. Yoshino let the light on, saying they could turn it off whenever they wanted, or not at all if Sakura preferred. Shikamaru uses it to show Sakura a few signs, and she doesn't care that he can't explain them to her by talking.

Shikaku told her that Shikamaru is really really smart, a _genius_! So Sakura knows he can explain it to her, and they do actually manage. After a while, she's yawning an impressive amount for just a nap, but Shikamaru grins wide, missing his front tooth, and puts a messy kiss on the tip of her nose. She wiggles it a little bit, crossed-eyes trying to see where he put his mouth. She feels so warm inside, a feeling truly unfamiliar to her.

Shyly, Sakura returns the kiss on Shikamaru cheek, missing a little bit and landing on the jaw, but he seems happy enough about it. Being very careful with the splinters keeping three of her left fingers in place, he takes her hand underneath the blanket. She thinks it's really nice of him, because if he speaks with his hands, then taking hers is like deciding he's not going to talk for a while. And Sakura likes it when people don't talk to her.

She closes her eyes, warm and cozy under her blanket, her hand throbbing with a pain that she strangely finds Shikamaru's hand to soothe a bit.

Sakura falls asleep only a moment later, and Shikamaru follows. The rice paper door of Shikamaru's room slides just a sliver, just enough for the two figures behind to take a peek inside. Shikaku is leaning against Yoshino's chest, his head on her shoulder as she wraps an arm around his waist. His eyes are shining in the afternoon sun, watching his son and this poor child who suffered too much, nap so peacefully.

A tear rolls down his cheek, as he watches them sleep, Shikamaru's adorable little snores barely audible from the door.

“You did a good thing, precious one,” Yoshino tells him, wrapping both arms around his waist and resting her chin on his shoulder. He squeezes her forearms gently, leaning back against her chest.

“I wish I caught her. If you had seen her, my love... I'm never going to forget what she looked like, lying in the dirt with the most peaceful, relieved smile on her face, even as she was dripping blood from her mouth.”

“She's safe now. She's okay. She's gonna be okay.”

Shikaku grits his teeth. “Those absolute cunts, they ran outside when they heard me scream, and the first thing they did when they saw her was complain about the mess. Then the woman made this _face_ and she ran up to me and asked if she had told me anything.”

Yoshino's nails are suddenly painful against his hips. “What the _fuck_ did she do to Sakura,” she growls, more wolf than deer, her Inuzuka blood slipping through the Nara facade.

“I don't know,” he says in a pained voice. “We'll find out,” he promises her, promises Sakura's sleeping form, promises Sakura's every following year, her future happy memories and joyful days.

Yoshino kisses the strip of skin coming out of the kimono collar, the side of his neck, his nape. She delicately pushes the kimono with her nose, kisses the space between his neck and shoulder.

“We should let them sleep. Let her rest fully. She really needs it, poor little fawn,” Yoshino whispers. Shikaku nods, and she takes a step back, both leaving the door slightly open so they can hear keep an ear on the room.

Yoshino takes another step back, bringing Shikaku with her, before spinning him around with the grip she still has on his hands. Gently, kindly, she pushes him against the opposite wall. They grew out of the impatience and pushiness of youth. Neither have good memories of violence and loss of control, and roughness has never been something they enjoyed.

She kisses his throat, every bit as gentle as she loves him, and Nara Yoshino would die for her husband. He grips her wrist, just hard enough to tell her how much he likes the kind, gentle pace.

“Let me show you how proud I am,” she writes in butterfly breaths against his collarbone.

“Please,” he answers with the tip of his fingers, drawing patterns of worship on her shoulder blades.

In the bedroom next to theirs, there are two children who found the best of each other in the first shared blink of an eye. As they sleep on, neither sees the air shifting on the window sill, the void splitting itself into a wide grin of gleaming, razor-sharp fangs.

The Fées are watching, and their curse isn't broken.

**Author's Note:**

> Sakura is cursed with obedience. Her foster family abuses that, so they do various hurtful, awful thing to her, including having her put her hand on a wood stove for several minutes. Her foster mother comes into her room one night and it's implied that she rapes her but there's no description of it so it could have been sexual assault or non-con touching, whatever you want to see there. For me it's rape but there's no mention of it so you do you. After that, Sakura realizes she won't ever be able to say no and that drives her to jumping out a window. There's a brief description of her physical state after the fall. There is a lot of dub-con and non-con orders and all that of course, cause no agency.


End file.
